What do Elton John, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ricky Martin and Nicole Kidman have in common? The answer — happily reported by celebrity site Glamour Magazine — is that all had babies with the help of surrogate mothers. And these stories are invariably accompanied by photos of the couples holding their babies and beaming with joy. Well, if you asked me, I ‘d answer rather differently — they are all participating in reproductive prostitution and child trafficking.

Surrogacy — or ‘contract pregnancy’ — involves a woman being either inseminated or having an embryo implanted in her uterus. When she gives birth nine months later, she surrenders the child to the commissioning parents — and almost always in exchange for money. Since the 1970s, over 25,000 babies have been born in the USA via surrogacy. But the practice is increasingly outsourced to countries like India, Ukraine, Thailand and Mexico. In India alone, the surrogacy industry is valued at over 450 million USD per year. Countries all over the world are faced with the question: ban or regulate surrogacy?

(Illustration by Daniel Gray)

The media mostly portrays surrogacy as a win-win situation: childless couples can fulfil their dream for a child, and poor women can earn money by helping others. Hello! magazine showcases Elton John saying that surrogacy “completes our family in the most precious and perfect way.” Vanity Fair features Ricky Martin and his twins, declaring: “I would give my life for the woman who helped me bring my sons into this world.” And Nicole Kidman comments: “Our family is truly blessed … No words can adequately convey the incredible gratitude that we feel for everyone … in particular our gestational carrier.” Martin and Kidman conspicuously avoid the word ‘mother’ when speaking about the women who bore children for them. The gratitude of the recipients of the surrogacy arrangements is paraded as success, but ultimately disguises the inherent power inequity in the arrangement: the parent is the one who pays, not the one who bears the child. Read more

Reject commercial surrogacy as another form of human trafficking

The practice of reproductive surrogacy is in the news in Australia because of the story of a Thai child, Gammy, a twin who was apparently abandoned by the buyers because he was sick. They took his healthy sister.

This story should not be seen as just an individual bad news story. It has much to tell us about the effects of commercial surrogacy. This industry is an offshoot of the very profitable reproductive technology industry, which created, through IVF, the possibility of persons buying children in the marketplace.

The result is that children can be rejected, left over or abandoned like the sofa that buyers decided was in the end not the right colour. Children have become goods to be traded.

Discussion of surrogacy usually revolves around the rights of the buyers and how the industry can be better regulated. The debate should be about whether such a harmful industry should be permitted at all. Read more

Baby Gammy has shown the need for debate on surrogacy

Dr Renate Klein

As the fallout from baby Gammy continues and Thailand moves to make commercial surrogacy illegal, calls are intensifying for Australia to legalise paid surrogacy with a ‘carefully designed system’ as columnist Julie Szego proposed on these pages last week.

As a critic of the IVF industry for three decades, my solution is very different. Rather than regulating a system that commodifies the resulting child and invariably uses women as “containers” for carrying and birthing a baby they are taught to say is not theirs, we need to focus on the demand for surrogacy and try to reduce it.

How is it that there are 100 or more couples who are now in understandable despair because they don’t know what’s happening to the Thai women carrying “their” babies, or to their frozen embryos in clinics that have been closed down? Who is facilitating couples – gay and straight – who are intent on their own genetic child and have the money to pay going baby shopping overseas? Read more

Dr Renate Klein is a feminist health researcher. She was Associate Professor in Women’s Studies at Deakin University until 2006.

The exceptional Australian author, journalist, literary critic and essayist Antonella Gambotto-Burke, is on the verge of releasing her latest book Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love.

When I first began reading Antonella’s books and essays (in Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and elsewhere), I was taken aback by the quality and eloquence of writing, the mastery of language, the way she captured and described people so acutely, her often acerbic observations and sharp wit. A magazine profile she wrote on former footballer Warwick Capper and his wife Joanne (included in The Best Australian Profiles, Black Inc., 2004) had me in hysterics. Another profile, not so amusing, on the porn star Sasha Grey, was beyond comparison. Her writing on the global trade in female bodies should be mandatory reading for anyone concerned about human rights violations. The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide, (one of her five books) is an intimate and searing portrayal of the death of her much loved brother at his own hand. Its pages drip with grief. But she would consider her greatest achievement her daughter Bethesda who arrived as a later-in-life gift which caused an earthquake in her soul and caused her to re-arrange her life and priorities.

For those interested in the theme of motherhood and attachment parenting, comes Antonella’s latest work, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love. In addition to her essays on love, death, marriage and motherhood, Mama includes long interviews with (in her words – I say that because I’m included!) “some of the most extraordinary people alive today: Steve Biddulph, Stephanie Coontz, artist Michael Hague, Tom Hodgkinson, Sheila Kitzinger, Laura Markham, Gabor Mate, Michel Odent, Attachment Parenting International’s Lysa Parker, MamaBake’s Michelle Shearer, Melinda Tankard Reist and many others. Connecting with each of them was a tremendous privilege”.

“A gifted writer, Antonella needs only a few lines to turn our attention toward the essential” writes obstetrician and visionary Michel Odent in his introduction to Mama.

Antonella argues that there’s no place for a debate between stay-at-home mothers and working mothers. “The debate we should be having is with the architects of a culture that makes calm and attentive parenthood close to impossible”.

“A number of women I know stifled their sensitivity and maternal instincts to compete in male-dominated spheres, eroding – and, often, destroying – the most important relationships of their lives.

“The bar is masculine, and women must adopt traditionally masculine characteristics – cultivated insensitivity, goal-orientated thinking, the prioritizing of the material – to compete,” she writes.

In her book, she asks why we are still conditioned to understand sensitivity as weakness, and why we continue to accept this conditioning. Other questions she raises include:

- Since when did ratification from a dispassionate boss trump the nurturance of human life?

- When did motherhood come to be understood as a series of “thankless tasks”?

- Why are breastfeeding numbers around the world dropping?

- How have we come to understand babies as “blobs”?

- How can we heal rifts with our children?

- What is behind the tsunami of behavioural disorders?

- Why is our culture so sexualised, and how is it affecting our children?

- What roles do fathers have in making a serene experience of motherhood?

- Why are so many children committing suicide?

- What are we doing to mothers, and how will this impact on our own future?

You’re Invited

Sydney: April 23, Mosman Library, 7pm, Antonella will share a conversation with Steve Biddulph, one of the world’s bestselling parenting authors, about Mama, motherhood and attachment parenting. Wine and food. Bookings essential, and can be made through Pages & Pages Bookshop in Mosman.

Melbourne: May 30 Readings in Hawthorn Melbourne,12pm. Bookings are essential here. Cost of tickets is redeemable against the cost of the book.

Northern NSW: May 6 Lennox Head Library, 10am, with Michelle Shearer of MamaBake.

Rosie became pregnant at 17 last year. She was labelled a slut. Melissa, 14, ran away from home so her parents couldn’t force her to have an abortion.

Jackie, 33, had a violent partner who didn’t want their baby. There was no public housing available and refuges were full. She slept in her car.

Kat, 32, was threatened by her boyfriend. She says: ”I decided when I saw my little boy kicking on the screen I was going to keep him. I knew this would make me a single parent – I had been told in no uncertain terms I was on my own unless I ‘toed the line’.”

These are just some of the stories of women I am aware of who decided to have a child in difficult circumstances – even though it meant bearing the label ”single mother”, with all its alienation and stigma.

They wanted their babies. They were determined to be the best mothers they could be. All did it tough. But their love for their child pulled them through. It’s the kind of love you need when you’re being marginalised, told you are a bludger and a leech. Even that you are to blame for the ills of the world.

Senator Cory Bernardi in his book The Conservative Revolution suggests there are higher levels of criminality among boys and promiscuity among girls ”who are brought up in single-parent families, more often than not headed by a single mother”. Read more here

‘Time had the opportunity to explore motherhood and the individuality of each parent-child bond, to validate the mundane and empower women who make countercultural parenting choices. Instead, the editors chose to cash in on cookie-cutter sexploitation and mum-vs-mum sensationalism’

Nicole Jameson

Time magazine threw fuel on the fires of the Mummy Wars last week, with its controversial feature story on Attachment Parenting. Or – and probably more to the point – with its controversial cover picture, featuring 26-year-old Jamie Lynn Grumet posing somewhat cooly while her almost four-year-old son stood on a child-sized chair and fed from her exposed breast.

The magazine cover, of course, went viral, sparking conversation and debate all the way from the blogosphere to the mainstream print media. Many were wondering about attachment parenting – and if breastfeeding chair-standing man-children was really part of the deal and if it’s what you have do to do be ‘Mom Enough’?

While standing up isn’t my preferred method of feeding my babies, I am committed to attachment parenting including extended breastfeeding. But I’m afraid the authentic message of this style of baby raising is being drowned out by TIME’s controversial cover.

According to Dr William Sears, pediatrician, father of 8 and founder of the modern Attachment Parenting movement,

“Attachment parenting is an approach to raising children rather than a strict set of rules. Certain practices are common to AP parents; they tend to breastfeed, hold their babies in their arms a lot, and practice positive discipline, but these are just tools for attachment, not criteria for being certified as an attached parent. So forget the controversies about breast vs bottle, crying it out or not, and which methods of discipline are acceptable, and go back to the basics. Above all, attachment parenting means opening your mind and heart to the individual needs of your baby and letting your knowledge of your child be your guide on making on –the-spot decisions about what works best for both of you. In a nutshell, AP is learning to read the cues of your baby and responding appropriately to those cues.” (The Attachment Parenting Book)

Breastfeeding children past infancy is all about bonding. Breastfeeding, says Dr Sears, “is the prime example of the mutual giving at the heart of attachment parenting, since both babies and mothers benefit from breastfeeding.”

And therein lies the rub. The benefit of breastfeeding to a baby is, to most, without question. But mothers? Surely breastfeeding is not for the benefit of the mother, beyond the self-sacrificial joy of providing for her little one? A burden, of sorts, gladly borne, but primarily for the sake of the beloved child. Weaning is liberation, from baby and from home. And with formula and cow’s milk so easily available in the West, the choice to continue breastfeeding once that child no longer physiologically requires it is baffling to many.

But extended breastfeeding is a choice, and a valid one at that. For some women, it is a choice pursuant to attachment parenting. For others, it is easier to allow a toddler to continue nursing than to enforce weaning. And for some women, probably more than will admit, breastfeeding is a source of pleasure, one which they themselves are unwilling to relinquish until it is absolutely necessary.

The notion of maternal pleasure in breastfeeding is one of the great taboos of Western culture. Because everyone knows that breasts are instruments of beauty, lovely sexual orbs manifested primarily for the enjoyment of men and the advertisement of Lynx deodorants. To enjoy breastfeeding – or for that matter co-sleeping, or popping your baby in a sling instead of a pram -is nothing less than socially deviant behaviour.

Look no further than a 2009 poll of Australians, which revealed that nearly a third of Australians felt that women should not breastfeed their babies beyond six months and that young adults aged 18-24 were the least supportive of a woman’s (and baby’s) right to breastfeed in public.

It should be of no surprise, then, that of the four families photographed for Time’s cover story, it was Jamie Lynne Grumet who was chosen for the cover image. Jamie Lynn Grumet, conventionally attractive young blonde, tightly braless as her camouflage-pants-clad preschooler stared down the camera instead of up into his mother’s lovely face. Jamie Lynn Grumet, sexpot MILF who just loves to nurse.

By sexualising the cover image for their Attachment Parenting feature, Time hit the viral media jackpot, and affirmed the relevancy of print media in an e-world. But did anyone read the story? Time had the opportunity to explore motherhood and the individuality of each parent-child bond, to validate the mundane and empower women who make countercultural parenting choices. Instead, they chose to cash in on cookie-cutter sexploitation and mum-vs-mum sensationalism. A sadly predictable choice, but one which ultimately does neither women nor motherhood any great favours.

Nicole Jameson is an Adelaide-based mother of two and Collective Shout activist. While completing her Master of International Public Health she developed a keen interest in maternal and child health. She would have breastfed her three-year-old while writing this if he hadn’t gone and self-weaned nearly two years ago.

I’ve been asked my opinion on the Time magazine cover depicting a mother breastfeeding her three-year-old son. My view is that women should be able to breastfeed for as long as they wish and be supported and encouraged to do so. However Time Magazine’s cover of Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding her three-year-old son, does more to sexualise breastfeeding than to promote it (could it even put some women off?). Most breastfeeding mothers cuddle their children in their arms while feeding. Here, Time has Grumet standing up (a better view of the breast perhaps?) and, somewhat unconventionally, depicting her child accessing her breast using a small chair. Both are staring at the camera in an impersonal image devoid of warmth – hardly the best advertisement for attachment parenting. Then of course there’s the headline ‘Are you mum enough’? which sets women up for competition and judgement. Mothering is challenging enough already, thinking they might not be ‘mum enough’ contributes to feelings of inadequacy.

Bitch Media echoes my thoughts on this image. And on three other magazine covers as well – two from Newsweek and one from Foreign Policy – in this May 10 piece by Kjerstin Johnson.

‘The foremost authority in Australia cyber safety lays it on the line and challenges parents to find their digital spine.’ – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

Whether it is problems with friends, worrying about how you look or just feeling a bit down in the dumps – these books are written especially for you – to help you in your journey. Purchase all four together and save $18.50 on postage! Author: Sharon Witt

In this DVD, Melinda takes us on a visual tour of popular culture. “Melinda’s presentation leaves audiences reeling. She delivers her message with a clarity and commonsense without peer.” – Steve Biddulph, author, Raising Boys, Raising Girls

In this easy-to-read updated book, Steve Biddulph shares powerful stories and give practical advice about every aspect of boyhood.

Men of Honour -written by Glen Gerreyn- encourages and inspires young men to take up the challenge to be honourable. Whether at school, in sport, at work or in relationships, we must develp our character to achieve success and experience the thrills life has on offer.

Purchase the Ruby Who? DVD and book together for only $35 saving 10% off the individual price.

“Getting Real contains a treasure trove of information and should be mandatory reading for all workers with young people in health, education and welfare” – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Adolescent Psychologist

Do you read women’s lifestyle magazines? Have you thought about how magazines might affect you when you read them? Faking It reflects the body of academic research on magazines, mass media, and the sexual objectification of women.

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity. Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others. Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity. Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others. Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Defiant Birth challenges widespread medical, and often social aversion to less than perfect pregnancies or genetically different babies. It also features women with disabilities who were discouraged from becoming pregnant at all.